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Self-consistent? I think not.
Dec. 20th, 2004 07:38 pm(This was going to be a comment elsewhere, but it quickly turned into an inflammatory rant that would have led to Stropping.)
Guardian discovers Street Teams. Film at 11.
I read the thing. It's the Guardian in hand-wringing mode and Something Must Be Done to save the children from Evil Commerce.
Oh, piss off.
Y'see, the thing is that I genuinely dislike the concept of 'street teams'; It's a cynical marketing ploy dreamed up by the same coke-addled arseholes who invented 'viral marketing'. They're taking the natural enthusiasm of yer Early Adopters or yer Connectors (Or however people are codified in 'The tipping point') and trying to get 'normal' people to do it in return for notional 'Brownie Points'. As if the more rabid Macistas were rewarded with a personal phonecall from Il Presidente Jobs ("Cheers for all your money, sucker. Sorry about the missing functionality in the last release but we'll have it fixed soon. Just keep making the payments.") or rabid slashdotters given a personal visit from ESR ("This here's my M-16. D'you feel lucky, punk?") or RMS (Oh fuck no).
Street Teamsters get a badge or access to a 'special' area of the band website. Jesus.
I won't have anything to do with bands that think like that.
The marketroids have read 'The tipping point' too. They've seen the way that email forwards work. They want to harness the power of early adopters with big address books so they don't have to bother with expensive R&D or proper advertising. What's the point when we just buy what the 'cool' people are waving about?
Basically, you fucking gadget freaks are supporting an entire ecosystem of moneysucking leeches who base their lifecycle around bullshitting people into buying Shiny! New! Toys! That all the cool kids have! Do I want an ipod? No. Do I need a phone that makes films? Hell no. Do I want a wee plastic box that goes scree! scree! scree! and emulates shit blob-chasing games from shit home computers? Get to fuck.
Bill Hicks came up with the only workable solution for those marketroids.
... Yet the thing is that most of school is about ugly tribal behaviour. There's something wrong with teenagers who haven't scrawled band-names on books or clothing. I don't see how 'doing a project' on your favourite band is any different (cringeworthy though it may feel from the distance of several years later) from the slack sixth-form bastards who'd play Led Zeppelin when it was their turn to take a school assembly and tell us to 'Listen to the lyrics, because they're, like, really meaningful.' Zep? Meaningful? Yer 'avin' a right larf, pal. There's more meaning in Girls Aloud. Still, at least it wasn't The Cure...
Guardian discovers Street Teams. Film at 11.
I read the thing. It's the Guardian in hand-wringing mode and Something Must Be Done to save the children from Evil Commerce.
Oh, piss off.
Y'see, the thing is that I genuinely dislike the concept of 'street teams'; It's a cynical marketing ploy dreamed up by the same coke-addled arseholes who invented 'viral marketing'. They're taking the natural enthusiasm of yer Early Adopters or yer Connectors (Or however people are codified in 'The tipping point') and trying to get 'normal' people to do it in return for notional 'Brownie Points'. As if the more rabid Macistas were rewarded with a personal phonecall from Il Presidente Jobs ("Cheers for all your money, sucker. Sorry about the missing functionality in the last release but we'll have it fixed soon. Just keep making the payments.") or rabid slashdotters given a personal visit from ESR ("This here's my M-16. D'you feel lucky, punk?") or RMS (Oh fuck no).
Street Teamsters get a badge or access to a 'special' area of the band website. Jesus.
I won't have anything to do with bands that think like that.
The marketroids have read 'The tipping point' too. They've seen the way that email forwards work. They want to harness the power of early adopters with big address books so they don't have to bother with expensive R&D or proper advertising. What's the point when we just buy what the 'cool' people are waving about?
Basically, you fucking gadget freaks are supporting an entire ecosystem of moneysucking leeches who base their lifecycle around bullshitting people into buying Shiny! New! Toys! That all the cool kids have! Do I want an ipod? No. Do I need a phone that makes films? Hell no. Do I want a wee plastic box that goes scree! scree! scree! and emulates shit blob-chasing games from shit home computers? Get to fuck.
Bill Hicks came up with the only workable solution for those marketroids.
... Yet the thing is that most of school is about ugly tribal behaviour. There's something wrong with teenagers who haven't scrawled band-names on books or clothing. I don't see how 'doing a project' on your favourite band is any different (cringeworthy though it may feel from the distance of several years later) from the slack sixth-form bastards who'd play Led Zeppelin when it was their turn to take a school assembly and tell us to 'Listen to the lyrics, because they're, like, really meaningful.' Zep? Meaningful? Yer 'avin' a right larf, pal. There's more meaning in Girls Aloud. Still, at least it wasn't The Cure...
